According to the Whole

The Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central event in the history of world, and its celebration is the preeminent feast day in the Christian year. But not all Christians today—and not even all Orthodox Christians—celebrate this most holy Feast on the same day. Whatever one’s feelings about cooperation between communions, or “ecumenism,” the fact is that the division between Christian communions on the dating of Pascha is a stumbling block to non-believers and should be felt as a scandal to us all. This division and scandal is hardly a new problem, however.

In my previous article on depicting the Trinity, which was initially intended as a stand-alone post, I reached the conclusion that Andrei Rublev’s masterful iconographic rendering of “the hospitality of Abraham” pictorial tradition was the height of Trinitarian visual depictions, in its mystical and symbolic highlighting of the divine attributes of the Triune Godhead. I argued in favor of this iconography as opposed to other various images of the Trinity which represented the Father as an old man.

From ancient times in the West, the liturgical usage of the word Alleluia ceased at Septuagesima (the first Sunday of the pre-Lenten season) all the way until the Paschal vigil. This cessation of the Alleluia in the Western liturgies stands in contrast with the Eastern practice of increasing the usage of Alleluia liturgically during Lent. Why this move in opposite directions between the two traditions? Is this an instance or example of the Eastern and Western rites having different spirits?

In the Western liturgical life as we have it in the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America today, we have precious few Sequence hymns prescribed to be sung. A Sequence hymn is a poetic chant sung after the Gradual and Alleluia/Tract. That’s why on Pentecost and throughout its Octave (excluding the following Sunday), it’s a joy to sing the Sequence “Veni, Sancte Spiritus.” This 12th or 13th century hymn was popularly dubbed the “Golden Sequence” in the late middle ages because of its “wondrous sweetness, clarity of style, pleasant brevity combined with wealth of thought (so that every line is a sentence), and finally the constructive grace and elegance displayed in the skilful and apt juxtaposition of contrasting thoughts.” I would also add to that list the memorableness of its melody.

A centuries old devotion practiced throughout the middle ages and beyond was the meditation on the Arma Christi, or the weapons of Christ—things associated with the Passion and Death of the Lord. The reason the instruments of Jesus’ suffering and death came to be known as his arms is because when they were used against him, they exhausted their powers of evil on him, only to be subverted by his willingness to accept them and to turn them into his own triumphs of patience, self-sacrifice, and love. Having disarmed evil, they became Christ’s own weapons of victory.